Marra is a prefixing language with three noun classes (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and a singular-plural-dual distinction. It is characterized by an intricate aspectual system, elaborate kin terms, no definite structure for relative clause construction, and a complex demonstrative system. Unlike many languages in the area, it has little avoidance language and no difference in the speech of male and female speakers.

Marra is a member of the Arnhem family, the second-largest Australian language family after Pama–Nyungan.[5] The Marra people refer to themselves as Marranbala, Marra or Mara, and their language as Marra or Mara. In addition to Warndarrang, which was spoken to the north of Marra along the Roper River, Marra was also in contact with Alawa (spoken inland, to the west), Binbinga and Wilangarra (West Barkly languages to the south), and Yanyuwa (a Pama–Nyungan language to the southeast).[6]

The Marra people were traditionally divided into three clans that lived along the Limmen Bight River in Arnhem Land (Northern Territory, Australia): burdal, murrungun, and mambali. In the 1970s, when the first serious fieldwork was being done on Marra, the mambali clan was extinct, though a family with the surname Riley of the burdal clan and a man by the name of Anday of the murrungun clan were able to provide the linguist Jeffrey Heath with cultural and linguistic information.[6]

The three clans, together with the Warndarrang-speaking guyal group, made up a set of four patrilinealsemimoieties, each of which had their own set of songs, myths, and rituals. Each semimoiety was also associated with a totem (olive python or fork-tailed catfish for mambali,goanna for guyal, black-headed python or antilopine kangaroo for burdal, and king brown snake for murrungun) and had responsibilities for that totem.[7] Note that Warndarang people use the same system of semimoieties, under the names mambali, murrungun, wurdal, and guyal (wuyal).[8]

In the years 1973-1975 and 1976–1977, the linguist Jeffrey Heath worked with some of the surviving speakers of Marra to create a sizeable grammar and dictionary. With the help of four principal informants – Mack Riley, Tom Riley, Johnnie (who was Warndarrang but spoke Marra and Nunggubuyu for most of his life), and Anday – Heath was able to collect grammar and vocabulary information as well as extensive texts on clan songs and totem rituals.

Marra has a consonant inventory nearly identical to those of Warndarrang and Alawa. There are two additional phonemes: the interdental /n̪/ and /l̪/ which occur only in a few flora-fauna terms, and are likely loanwords from either Nunggubuyu or Yanyuwa, both of which languages use these phonemes frequently.

A standard orthography has been developed over several years of work with Diwurruwurru-Jaru Aboriginal Corporation (also known as the Katherine Regional Aboriginal Language Centre).[9] The standard orthography is used throughout this article, but the table below also gives the equivalent IPA symbols in brackets where appropriate. The interdental sounds have not been included in the table as they are only found in loanwords.

Marra has three main vowels: /i/, /u/, and /a/. The vowel /e/ is found in exactly two words, renburr “paper wasp” and reywuy “sandfly,” and the vowel /o/ in one word, yo!, a common interjection meaning “yes!” found throughout the area, including in the local English-based creole. There is no contrast in Marra vowel length, though the first vowel of a two-syllable word is often lengthened, as are the word-final vowels in a particular style of story-telling. Words cannot begin with a vowel, with the exception of a handful of stems beginning with /a/.

Vowels clusters do not occur; all but one of adjacent underlying vowels are deleted. The only permitted word-initial consonant clusters are homorganic (involving the same place of articulation) nasal + stop combinations, particularly mb or ngg. The nominative prefix n-, when added to a stem beginning with a cluster, is usually pronounced with the preceding syllable, and the n- with combined with /r/ or /n/ results in the addition of the meaningless particle –nga- between the prefix and the stem.

Word-final consonant clusters can only take the form liquid (lateral or rhotic) plus noncoronal (labial, laminoalveolar, or velar) stop or nasal. Within a word, triple clusters are limited to a liquid and a homorganic nasal + stop cluster or to a liquid, a noncoronal, and any other consonant. Examples of this include gurralgmaninja “kookaburra (Dacelo leachii)” and bulnggan “extinguished fire.” Many double-consonant clusters can occur.

In segments that are repeated in a word – either by reduplication or by chance morphology – the second stop is often lenited into a semivowel or lost altogether. /j/ and /ʈ/ will become /y/, /b/ will become /w/, and /g/ will either become /w/ or ø. This lenition can optionally occur at the beginning of a small number of nouns when the stem is preceded by a prefix ending in a vowel.

There are also several instances of word-initial lenition of /g/ or /b/ to /w/, in cardinal directions, kin terms, and a few other isolated examples. At the beginning of verb stems, the underlying combination rrn will have the surface form of n, whereas an n followed by the phonemes l, rl, rr, r, n, or ny in any other context results in the deletion of the initial n.

Stops are frequently nasalized (pronounced as the nasal at the stop’s place of articulation) when followed by a nasal or any other non-stop. Examples of this include the reduplicated man-mad “to mix a lot” from mad “to mix” or the noun + case ending of nga-lurlbam-nyu from lurlbab “juvenile euro (Macropus robustus)”.

In Marra, there is no clear grammatical distinction between nouns, adjectives, and adverbs; they are all treated the same morphologically. Personal and demonstrative pronouns, however, each form a distinctive word class, and all can be clearly distinguished from verb complexes.

Noun phrases (NP’s) typically consist of an article, a noun, and the possibilities for adjuncts, which often but not always follow the main noun.

In additional to the articles, each noun is marked with a prefix containing information about case (nominative or non-nominative), gender (masculine, feminine, or neuter), and number (singular, plural, dual), as follows:

Nom.

Non-Nom.

MSg

ø-

na-

FSg

n-

ya-

Ne

n-

nya-

Du

wurr-

wirri-

Pl

wul-

wili-

Almost all non-human singular nouns are marked as masculine, though some specifically-female marsupial terms can be marked as feminine. The neuter case is reserved for body parts, topographic terms, abstract conceptions, and the word gurnarru “sun.”

The nominative (-ø) is used for intransitive subjects or transitive objects – such a case is usually called the “absolutive,” though some languages to the south of Marra have an “absolutive” case that is distinct from this usage.

The ergative or instrumental case (also –ø, though takes the non-nominative prefix) is used to mark the subject of a transitive verb (the usual meaning of “ergative”) or to mark the object used to complete the action of the verb (the usual meaning of “instrumental”). This case, along with a genitive pronoun, is also used to mark possession (see below).

The allative/locative case (-yurr) signals the idea of direction of motion (“to X”), static location (“in/on/at X”), or motional location (“by/through X”). Though this meaning is within the domain of the pergressive case in many related languages, the Marra pergressive (-ya “through” or “along”) is restricted to body-part or topographic terms.

The ablative case is used to specify the origin of motion. It takes the form –yani for most nouns but -yana for place names.

Lastly, the purposive –ni indicates the goal of the verb, as in the sentence bu-ngarlini na-yija-ni “I set fires for game” (i.e., in order to hunt or obtain game), where the verb bu-ngarlini is intransitive and thus yija “game” takes the purposive and not the nominative.

Possession is typically marked by a genitive pronoun, though if the possessor noun (in the ergative/instrumental case) is present the pronoun is sometimes omitted. For example, n-nga-radburr n-jawurru means “his camp” with the third person singular genitive pronoun jawurru, and either nariyi-marr n-nga-radburr n-jawurru or nariyi-marr n-nga-radburr can mean “the man’s camp.”

The numerals six through ten are expressed by combining “five” with another number, e.g., mani n-murrji wurruja wurruja for “nine.” There are also more general quantifiers such as jari and mijimbangu “many,” dangulirrnya “big group” (non-human), garnyirrimba “big group” (human), and murrgu “a few.”

Like many Australian languages, Marra has a process known as reduplication, where some or all of a stem is repeated. With human nouns, reduplication takes the meaning of three or more of that noun, such as jawu-yawulba “three or more old people” from jawulba “old person,” and a few topographic nouns can be reduplicated to mean the collective plural, as in lurlga-lurlga “islands.”

With both human and non-human nouns, reduplication along with the pergressive case suffix can create the meaning “having X” or “having lots of X,” as in girri-girriya-ya “having a woman” (being a married man) from girriya “woman.”

A few verb stems also display partial reduplication to indicate a repeated action, as in da-dad-gujujunyi “he repeatedly tied it or them up” as opposed to dad-gujujunyi “he was tying it or them up.”

In addition to the pronoun markers on nouns (see above) and verbs (see below), Marra also has independent personal pronouns. Unlike other nouns, pronouns do not show a nominative/ergative distinction but instead use the nominative form to mark all subjects as well as the direct object of a transitive verb. Because these pronouns are marked within the verb clause, their inclusion is often optional and can be used to highlight a particular point in what is known as the “emphatic” case.

There are five categories for demonstrative pronouns: proximate, localized immediate, unlocalized immediate, distant, and anaphoric. With the proximate stems, there are separate forms for predicative (in the “predicate” of the sentence, or the part that modifies the subject) or nonpredicative nouns.

Proximate refers to the area around the speaker, the equivalent of “here.” The immediate refers to the area around the person being addressed or to the area approximately two meters away from the speaker. The localized immediate specifies the location, whereas the unlocalized immediate, which is rarer, is more general.

The distant category refers to anything outside of the immediate, either visible to the speaker or invisible. The anaphoric category is anything within the distant category that has previously been referred to, indicating that the location is not new to the discourse.

These pronouns have separate forms for masculine singular, feminine singular, neuter, dual, and plural, each of which has a nominative and non-nominative form. They are generally formed by the prefixes ni- (MSg), ngi- (FSg), n-gi- (Ne), wirr- or warra- (Du), and wil- or wila- (Pl) for the nominative or na- (MSg), ya- (FSg), nya- (Ne), wirri- (Du), and wili- (Pl) for the non-nominative and the suffixes -nya (non-predicative proximate), -n-garra (predicative proximate), -ya (unlocalized immediate), -yarra (localized immediate), -nanya or -ninya (distant), and -nangga or -ningga (anaphoric), though there are irregular forms for some combinations.

From these, one can form demonstrative adverbs, in the locative or allative cases. These have the same spatial meaning as the corresponding demonstrative pronouns, but they refer to a general location rather than the location of a specific noun. The allative forms are summarized in the following table:

Proximate predicative

gin.garra

Proximate non-predicative

ginya

Unlocalized immediate

gaya

Localized immediate

gayarra

Distant

gananya

Anaphoric

ganangga

To make the locative forms, the gi-/ga- in the table above is replaced by the prefix wi-/nya- (proximate), warri-/nyarri- (immediate), or wani-/nyani- (distant or anaphoric), and the suffix -yu(rr) is added.

Yes-no questions in Marra are identical to assertions, with a slight intonation difference. There is no tag for these statements (an equivalent to the English “right?” or “aren’t you?”), though the local English-based creole’s question marker ngi occasionally appears in modern Marra speech.

Other types of interrogative clauses involve words that can also take an indefinite form, as in ngani, which can mean “who?”, “someone,” or “anyone.” If the distinction between interrogative and indefinite is unclear from context, the adverb jabay “maybe” can be added to indicate that the phrase is an assertion and not a question.

These interrogative words take a prefix to mark number and gender – masculine singular is the default, though any additional presupposed information can be included in the marking. Case suffixes can also be marked. These particles are typically clause-initial and then followed by the assertion whose details are being elicited. For instance, na-nginjani-ni wu-rlini? literally means “for what? he went” with the sense of “why did he go?” and nginjani gana rag-ninyi? means “what? you killed it” or “what did you kill?”

A basic verb complex in Marra consists of a pronominal prefix, an inflectable verb-stem, and suffixes marking tense, aspect, and mood. Often, however, there is an uninflectable “main verb” that specifies the meaning of the verb that is then followed by the inflectable “auxiliary verb.” Some verbs in Marra can only be main verbs or auxiliary verbs, though many can serve in both positions.

The benefactive prefix indicates that something was done “for” somebody as, as in ma-rang-nan.ganyi “he killed it for me.” Ma- is used when there is a main-auxiliary distinction; marl- is used when there is only one verb in the complex.
The centripetal particle is used to indicate motion within the speaker’s frame of reference, with the idea of the motion coming “back” or “this way.” It is the only way to distinguish the meaning of verbs “to take” from “to bring” or “to go” from “to come.”

Marra aspect is split between continuous and punctual (also known as “perfective”) actions, with the former divided into durative (happened throughout) and non-durative (happened over time, but not the entire time). The positive/negative division distinguishes things that did, are, or will happen from things that did not, are not, or will not happen, a category termed in the analyses of some neighboring languages as “irrealis.”

The “future indefinite” category is quite rare and takes the meaning of “might.” The “past potential” refers to something that was just about to happen (but didn’t, due to an interruption) or should have happened.

The evitative category might be translated as “lest” or “or else,” indicating that something undesirable might occur if something else is or is not done. For example, nga-nanggu-wa wuninggi rang-ningganjiyi means “give it to me, or else I will hit you.” Note that the evitative is normally paired with another clause (as Heath says, it “does not normally stand alone as a simple prediction of impending doom”), usually in the imperative.

As in Warndarrang and other related languages, a different pronominal prefix is added to the verb for each combination of subject and object. For example, a verb with a second-person singular subject and a first-person exclusive dual object would take the prefix nirrgu- but the person-person exclusive dual subject with a third-person dual object would take the prefix nimbirr-. Within the second-person subject, third-person object paradigm, there are also different pronouns for imperative and non-imperative verbs. There are extremely complicated rules, with many exceptions, for generating these pronouns.
When the third person or third person subject/third person object category is marked, the additional prefix –wa- is added to the complex.

Within a noun phrase (NP) or verb complex, word order is almost completely fixed. Articles are followed by demonstrative pronouns are followed by the main noun are followed by adjectives, though genitive pronouns may either follow or precede the main noun. For verbs, the negative particles must immediately precede the verb complex, and within the complex the order of the morphemes is strictly set.

Within the clause, however, the order of the NPs, verb complexes, and adverbs is free. The first element is typically considered to be the most important element. If the first element is not a verb complex, the main verb complex commonly but not always assumes the second position; there appears to be no difference in meaning between those sentences that place the verb complex in the second position and those that do not.

Subordinated clauses are typically marked by a particle or conjunction such as bigana “because” or waninggayani “after that.” If, however, the clause can be reduced to a single verb complex, that word is typically nominalized using the suffixes –manjarr or –manggirri and then placed following the head noun.

Marra, like many languages of the area, has taboos preventing the direct interaction of siblings of the opposite sex, beginning around age eight (the age of circumcision in males). The only specific avoidance term in Marra, however, is marlayarra, used by a sister of a boy who has been circumcised to address or refer to him – in any other situation, the term for a circumcised boy is warlima.

Marra does not have the complex avoidance speech or male-female language distinction that is found in neighboring Yanyula. Men are, however, not supposed to pronounce the names of their mother-in-law (wife’s mother), their wife’s mother’s brother, or their wife’s brother, though these taboos are relaxed as a man ages.

Warndarrang (a language not spoken since 1974) and Marra (a language with only a small number of speakers) are each other’s closest relatives. Together with Alawa (also critically endangered) and Yugul (a language attested by speakers of Warndarrang, Marra, and Alawa but apparently extinct,[8] these languages form the Marran subgroup of the Gunwinyguan language family. The three documented languages share much vocabulary and have many similar grammatical structures, though there are significant differences, and Warndarrang has been heavily influenced by loanwords from Nunggubuyu and Ngandi to the north.[8]

All three languages are prefixing, and their verbs consist of either a single inflected stem or an uninflected “main verb” preceding an inflected auxiliary verb.[10] Such verbal particles are absent in the languages to the north.[11] The Marran languages also share verbal features such as particle reduplication within the verbal complex indicating a repeated or continuous action (a pattern common in Australian languages), and the negation of verbs is indicated by a particle immediately preceding the verb complex (gu in both Warndarang and Marra but ngayi in Alawa).[10]

Marra has a significantly more complex verbal inflection system than Warndarrang (sixteen different tense/aspect/mood categories in Marra but only eight in Warndarrang and apparently seven in Alawa), an unusually intricate system for Australian languages.[6] Both languages, however, have conjugation paradigms that are highly verb-specific.

In addition to the similarities in the order of the verb complex, Marra and Warndarrang also both use word-order to focus, or highlight, a particular item within the clause, though otherwise the word-order in Marra is far stricter than that in Warndarrang.

Alawa divides its nouns into two genders (masculine and feminine)[12] while Marra has three classes (masculine, feminine, and neuter) and Warndarrang six. All three languages distinguish between singular, dual, and plural, with Warndarrang having an additional “paucal” (three to five) class for human nouns. The use of noun cases in Warndarrang and Marra are nearly identical – Marra condenses the allative and locative cases and adds a pergressive case – though the only cognate across the paradigm is the purposive -ni. The case marking system of Alawa is apparently not related.[13] The demonstratives in Warndarrang and Marra cover approximately the same semantic categories (proximate, immediate, distant, and anaphoric, though Warndarrang adds an intermediate near-distant), though the forms themselves have little similarity. In fact, the Marra demonstratives inflect for case, number, and gender, while Warndarrang demonstratives engage a single basic form. Again, the Alawa demonstrative system is entirely separate, drawing only a single distance distinction (“this” versus “that”) but with more nuanced anaphoric distinctions.

The directional terminology between Warndarang and Marra shares many cognates, such as garrgali (Marra) and arrgarli (Warndarrang) for “west” or guymi (both languages) for “north,” though Marra again has a far more intricate and irregular morphological system to distinguish cases in these terms. Marra also has an up/down directional distinction that is absent in Warndarrang. There is no Alawa data for cardinal directions.[13]

Cultural terminology between the three languages is distinct. Marra has an extremely complex kinship terminology system, including a large number of dyadic terms;[6] Warndarrang’s system appeared to be much simpler, though the linguist Jeffrey Heath was unable to elicit much kinship information before his informant died.[8] Alawa has a morphologically-irregular system similar to Marra’s, but lacks the dyadic terms and shares few cognates (exceptions include baba for “older sibling”). A cursory analysis of the flora-fauna terms in the three languages also reveals few cognates. The semi-moieties in Warndarrang and Marra have nearly identical names, however, though the groups were associated with different totems, songs, and rituals.[7]

1.
Australia
–
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the worlds sixth-largest country by total area, the neighbouring countries are Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the north-east, and New Zealand to the south-east. Australias capital is Canberra, and its largest urban area is Sydney, for about 50,000 years before the first British settlement in the late 18th century, Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians, who spoke languages classifiable into roughly 250 groups. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades, and by the 1850s most of the continent had been explored, on 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia has since maintained a liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy comprising six states. The population of 24 million is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated on the eastern seaboard, Australia has the worlds 13th-largest economy and ninth-highest per capita income. With the second-highest human development index globally, the country highly in quality of life, health, education, economic freedom. The name Australia is derived from the Latin Terra Australis a name used for putative lands in the southern hemisphere since ancient times, the Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south. On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted, in 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia. The first official published use of the term Australia came with the 1830 publication of The Australia Directory and these first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturists, the northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia. The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch. The first ship and crew to chart the Australian coast and meet with Aboriginal people was the Duyfken captained by Dutch navigator, Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, the Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent New Holland during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement. William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688, in 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, and the exploration, a British settlement was established in Van Diemens Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803, and it became a separate colony in 1825. The United Kingdom formally claimed the part of Western Australia in 1828. Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales, South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, the Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia

2.
Northern Territory
–
The Northern Territory is a federal Australian territory in the central and central northern regions of Australia. It shares borders with Western Australia to the west, South Australia to the south, to the north, the territory is bordered by the Timor Sea, the Arafura Sea and the Gulf of Carpentaria. Despite its large area—over 1,349,129 square kilometres, the Northern Territorys population of 244,000 makes it the least populous of Australias eight major states and territories, having fewer than half as many people as Tasmania. The archaeological history of the Northern Territory begins over 40,000 years ago when Indigenous Australians settled the region, makassan traders began trading with the indigenous people of the Northern Territory for trepang from at least the 18th century onwards. The coast of the territory was first seen by Europeans in the 17th century, the British were the first Europeans to attempt to settle the coastal regions. After three failed attempts to establish a settlement, success was achieved in 1869 with the establishment of a settlement at Port Darwin. Today the economy is based on tourism, especially Kakadu National Park in the Top End and the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park in central Australia, the capital and largest city is Darwin. The population is not concentrated in regions but rather along the Stuart Highway. The other major settlements are Palmerston, Alice Springs, Katherine, Nhulunbuy, residents of the Northern Territory are often known simply as Territorians and fully as Northern Territorians, or more informally as Top Enders and Centralians. With the coming of the British, there were four attempts to settle the harsh environment of the northern coast. The Northern Territory was part of colonial New South Wales from 1825 to 1863, except for a time from February to December 1846. It was part of South Australia from 1863 to 1911, under the administration of colonial South Australia, the overland telegraph was constructed between 1870 and 1872. A railway was built between Palmerston and Pine Creek between 1883 and 1889. The economic pattern of raising and mining was established so that by 1911 there were 513,000 cattle. Victoria River Downs was at one time the largest cattle station in the world, gold was found at Grove Hill in 1872 and at Pine Creek, Brocks Creek, Burrundi, and copper was found at Daly River. On 1 January 1911, a decade after federation, the Northern Territory was separated from South Australia, alfred Deakin opined at this time To me the question has been not so much commercial as national, first, second, third and last. Either we must accomplish the peopling of the territory or submit to its transfer to some other nation. In late 1912 there was growing sentiment that the name Northern Territory was unsatisfactory, the names Kingsland, Centralia and Territoria were proposed with Kingsland becoming the preferred choice in 1913

3.
Goanna
–
A goanna is any of several Australian monitor lizards of the genus Varanus, as well as certain species from Southeast Asia. Around 30 species of goanna are known,25 of which are found in Australia and this varied group of carnivorous reptiles ranges greatly in size and fills several ecological niches. The goanna features prominently in Aboriginal mythology and Australian folklore, being predatory lizards, goannas are often quite large, or at least bulky, with sharp teeth and claws. The largest is the perentie, which can grow over 2.5 m in length, pygmy goannas may be smaller than a mans arm. The smallest of these, the short-tailed monitor reaches only 20 cm in length and they survive on smaller prey, such as insects and mice. Goannas combine predatory and scavenging behaviours, a goanna will prey on any animal it can catch and is small enough to eat whole. Goannas have been blamed for the death of sheep by farmers, though most likely erroneously, most goannas are dark-coloured, with greys, browns, blacks and greens featuring prominently, however, white is also common. Many desert-dwelling species also feature yellow-red tones, camouflage ranges from bands and stripes to splotches, speckles, and circles, and can change as the creature matures, with juveniles sometimes being brighter than adults. Like most lizards, goannas lay eggs, most lay eggs in a nest or burrow, but some species lay their eggs inside termite mounds. This offers protection and incubation, additionally, the termites may provide a meal for the young as they hatch, unlike some other species of lizards, goannas do not have the ability to regrow limbs or tails. The name goanna might have derived from iguana, as early European settlers likened goannas to the South American lizards, over time, the initial vowel sound was dropped. A similar explanation is used to link possum to the American opossum, complete list of genus Varanus For the most part, in common names, goanna and monitor are interchangeable. Most species are known to climb trees or outcrops, several primarily arboreal species are known, the lace monitor is probably the best-known among these, but is not the most common. The lace monitor is the second-largest of all goannas, reaching lengths of up to 2 m, other more common tree goannas, such as the Timor tree monitor and mournful tree monitor do not grow to quite such lengths, averaging a maximum of 61 cm, nose-to-tail. Other goannas are adapted to coastal environments, such as the mangrove goanna. Further still, the Mertens water monitor, found in lagoons, most other goannas are good swimmers, but tend not to voluntarily venture into the water. The diets of goannas vary greatly depending on the species and the habitat, prey can include all manner of small animals, insects, smaller lizards, snakes, mammals, birds, and eggs. Meals are often eaten whole, thus the size of their meals may depend on the size of the animals, many of the small species feed mostly on insects, with some being small lizard experts

4.
Arnhem Land
–
Arnhem Land is one of the five regions of the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located in the corner of the territory and is around 500 km from the territory capital Darwin. The region has an area of 97,000 km2, which covers the area of Kakadu National Park. The area covers about 34,000 km2 and has an population of 16,000, of whom 12,000 are Yolngu. The region’s service hub is Nhulunbuy,600 km east of Darwin, other major population centres are Yirrkala, Gunbalanya, Ramingining, and Maningrida. A substantial proportion of the population, which is mostly Aboriginal and this outstation movement started in the early 1980s. Many Aboriginal groups moved to very small settlements on their traditional lands. These population groups have very little western influence culturally speaking, many of the regions leaders have called and continue to call for a treaty that would allow the Yolngu to operate under their own traditional laws. In 2013-14, the region contributed around $1.3 billion or 7% to the Northern Territory’s gross state product. Arnhem Land has been occupied by people for tens of thousands of years and is the location of the oldest-known stone axe. The Gove Peninsula was heavily involved in the defence of Australia during World War II, at least since the 18th century Muslim traders from Makassar visited Arnhem Land each year to trade, harvest, and process sea cucumbers or trepang. This sea slug is highly prized in Chinese cuisine, for folk medicine and this Macassan contact with Australia is the first recorded example of interaction between the inhabitants of the Australian continent and their Asian neighbours. This contact had an effect on local indigenous Australians. The Makassans exchanged goods such as cloth, tobacco, knives, rice, Makassar pidgin became a lingua franca along the north coast among several indigenous Australian groups who were brought into greater contact with each other by the seafaring Makassan culture. These traders from the southwest corner of Sulawesi also introduced the word balanda for white people, in Arnhem Land, the word is still widely used today to refer to white Australians. The Dutch started settling in Sulawesi Island in the early 17th century, archeological remains of Makassar contact, including trepang processing plants from the 18th and 19th centuries, are still found at Australian locations such as Port Essington and Groote Eylandt. The Makassans also planted tamarind trees, after processing, the sea slugs were traded by the Makassans to Southern China. In 2014, an 18th-century Chinese coin was found in the area of Wessel Islands off the coast on a beach on Elcho Island during a historical expedition

5.
Gulf of Carpentaria
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The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea. The northern boundary is defined as a line from Slade Point, Queensland in the northeast, to Cape Arnhem. At its mouth, the Gulf is 590 km wide, the north-south length exceeds 700 km. It covers a area of about 300,000 km². The general depth is between 55 and 66 metres and does not exceed 82 metres, the tidal range in the Gulf of Carpentaria is between two and three metres. The Gulf and adjacent Sahul Shelf were dry land at the peak of the last ice age 18,000 years ago when sea level was around 120 m below its present position. At that time a large, shallow lake occupied the centre of what is now the Gulf, the Gulf hosts a submerged coral reef province that was only recognised in 2004. The first known European explorer to visit the region was the Dutch Willem Janszoon in his 1605–6 voyage and his fellow countryman, Jan Carstenszoon, visited in 1623 and named the gulf in honour of Pieter de Carpentier, at that time the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. Abel Tasman also explored the coast in 1644, the region was later explored and charted by Matthew Flinders in 1802 and 1803. The land bordering the Gulf is generally flat and low-lying, to the west is Arnhem Land, the Top End of the Northern Territory, and Groote Eylandt, the largest island in the Gulf. To the east is the Cape York Peninsula and Torres Strait which joins the Gulf to the Coral Sea, the area to the south is known as the Gulf Country. The climate is hot and humid with two seasons per year, the dry season lasts from about April until November and is characterized by very dry southeast to east winds, generated by migratory winter high pressure systems to the south. The wet season lasts from December to March, most of the years rainfall is compressed into these months, and during this period, many low-lying areas are flooded. The Gulf is prone to tropical cyclones during the period between November and April, the gulf experiences an average of three cyclones each year that are thought to transport sediments in a clockwise direction along the Gulfs coast. In many other parts of Australia, there are dramatic climatic transitions over fairly short distances, in September and October the Morning Glory cloud appears in the Southern Gulf. The best vantage point to see this phenomenon is in the Burketown area shortly after dawn and it has been hypothesized that the Gulf experienced a major asteroid impact event in 536 A. D. The Gulf of Carpentaria is known to contain fringing reefs and isolated coral colonies, however, this has not always been the case. Their existence points to an earlier, late Quaternary phase of reef growth under cooler-climate

6.
Black-headed python
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Aspidites melanocephalus, commonly known as the black-headed python, is a species of snake in the family Pythonidae. The species is native to Australia, adults grow to an average of 1. 5–2 m in total length, but can grow to a maximum total length of 3.5 m. The body is muscular with a profile, while the tail tapers to a thin point. The top of the head is covered by large symmetrical scales, the dorsal scales, which are smooth and glossy, number 50-65 rows at midbody, while there are 315-355 ventral scales. The tail has 60-75 mainly single subcaudal scales and the scale is single. The posterior subcaudals tend to be divided, often irregularly, the color pattern consists of shades of black, dark grey, brown, gold, and cream arranged in a striped or brindled pattern. The belly is light-coloured, flecked with darker spots, the head is shiny black that also extends down the neck and throat for several inches. Found in Australia in the half of the country, excluding the very arid regions. The type locality given is Port Denison Bowen Queensland, Australia, occurs in humid tropical to semi-arid conditions. These snakes are terrestrial and are found in amongst rocks. If disturbed, they will hiss loudly, but are unlikely to bite unless hunting prey and they will sometimes strike with a closed mouth, but generally can be handled easily. They are strong swimmers, but are almost never found inside water, the diet consists of mainly reptiles, including snakes, but they will eat mammals if available. Because black-headed pythons live in the desert, they heat up a lot quicker and this means they can eat more because they digest food quicker in warmer conditions. When ingesting large prey this species one or two coils just ahead of its distended mouth and by constriction makes the task of swallowing easier. Oviparous, with 5-10 eggs per clutch, the females stay coiled about the eggs and incubate them until they hatch, which is usually after 2–3 months. The young will take prey as soon as two days after hatching. Immature individuals are vulnerable to predation, including cannibalism, adults have no natural predators other than dingos and humans. Due to its nature and striking color pattern, this species has become very desirable as an exotic pet

7.
Borroloola
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Borroloola is a town in the Northern Territory of Australia. It is located on the McArthur River, about 50 km upstream from the Gulf of Carpentaria, at the 2011 census, Borroloola had a population of 926. Borroloola lies on the country of the Yanyuwa people, on the coastal plain between the Barkly Tablelands and the Gulf of Carpentaria. Rivers that run from the Tablelands escarpment to the Gulf regularly flood in the wet season, the rivers of this region have carved spectacular gorges through sandstone deposits in their upper reaches. The rivers and coastal areas are host to barramundi, earning Borroloola a reputation among sports fisherman, the region has little rain from May to September, and is characterised by lightly treed Savanna grasslands. The Coast Track follows the path of cattle drovers of the late 19th century as they moved herds from north-west Queensland to stock the new stations of the Northern Territory, the drovers in turn followed a well-worn Aboriginal path. Borroloola was declared a town on 10 September 1885, in the local Indigenous languages of Yanyuwa, Garrwa, Marra, Gudanji and Binbingka, Borroloola would be written as Burrulula. The name belongs to a lagoon just to the east of the present day caravan park. The name originally Borrolooloo, translates borrow women, name of the lagoon and it was at this site that the Hill Kangaroo Ancestral Being danced his ceremonies. The white barked gum trees in the area are said to be his body decorations as they flew from his body as he danced, other Indigenous names in the area of Borroloola are Wurrarawala this hill is associated with the backbone of the Hill Kangaroo Ancestor. Bunubunu, this creek is associated with a File Snake Ancestor, warralungku and Mabunji, a set of specific rocks at the McArthur River Crossing that carry the imprint of the Hill Kangaroos tail and feet. The area of Borroloola belongs to members of the Rrumburriya clan, in 1977, the Yanyuwa people were the first to successfully lodge a claim under the new Federal Aboriginal Land Rights Act 1976 over Borroloola and the Pellew Islands. The claim was resolved in 2015. A second land claim in 2002, saw the islands in the area also handed back. The King Ash Bay fishing club is situated on the McArthur River about 40 km downstream from Borroloola by river and their boat ramp provides access to the mangrove-lined waterways of the McArthur estuary and the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The Fishing Classic competition, held over the Easter weekend each year, the Borroloola Community Education Centre contains a preschool, primary school and secondary school. The Borroloola CEC has a staff of more than 25. The staff are composed of mostly out-of-state teachers and local indigenous teacher aides, the CEC enjoys an average attendance of 100 students, but has far more listed on its rolls

8.
Totem
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A totem is a spirit being, sacred object, or symbol that serves as an emblem of a group of people, such as a family, clan, lineage, or tribe. However, the people of those cultures have words for their guardian spirits in their own languages. Totem poles of the Pacific Northwest of North America are monumental poles of heraldry and they feature many different designs that function as crests of families or chiefs. They recount stories owned by families or chiefs, or commemorate special occasions. Totemism is a associated with animistic religions. The totem is usually an animal or other natural figure that represents a group of related people such as a clan. Scottish ethnologist John Ferguson McLennan, following the vogue of 19th-century research, addressed totemism in a perspective in his study The Worship of Animals. McLennan did not seek to explain the origin of the totemistic phenomenon. If the origin of the name was forgotten, Lang argued, through nature myths animals and natural objects were considered as the relatives, patrons, or ancestors of the respective social units. In 1910, Russian American ethnologist Alexander Goldenweiser, subjected totemistic phenomena to sharp criticism, the leading representative of British social anthropology, A. R. As a chief representative of modern structuralism, French ethnologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, poets, and to a lesser extent fiction writers, often use anthropological concepts, including the anthropological understanding of totemism. For this reason literary criticism often resorts to psychoanalytic, anthropological analyses

The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) is an independent Australian …

A Sea of Hands outside the AIATSIS building on Acton Peninsula. The Sea of Hands was created in 2014 with the help of local communities, to commemorate the sixth anniversary of the National Apology to Australia's First Peoples, 2008.

The Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies (GERAIS)

Chrissy Grant, Chair of the AIATSIS Research Ethics Committee, running a GERAIS workshop at AIATSIS, 2015

Part of the UNESCO listed Australian Indigenous Language collection held at AIATSIS

The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin …

Image: Cardinal vowels Jones x ray

The authors of textbooks or similar publications often create revised versions of the IPA chart to express their own preferences or needs. The image displays one such version. Only the black symbols are part of the IPA; common additional symbols are in grey.